Mark Feeney

THE SPIES OF WARSAW
By Alan Furst
Random House, 266 pages, $25

IT'S 1937, AND Lt. Col. Jean-François Mercier is the French military attaché in Warsaw. A minor nobleman and former cavalry officer, he’s rather restive in his largely desk-bound assignment—as one would expect from a man decorated with the Croix de Guerre, a passing acquaintance of Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle is taller, but otherwise not a patch on Mercier. "He had fair skin, pale, and refined features, all of which made him seem younger than he was, though these proportions, classic in the French aristocrat, were somehow contradicted by very deep, very thoughtful, gray-green eyes. Nonetheless, he was what he was, with the relaxed confidence of the breed and, when he smiled, a touch of the insouciant view of the world common to the southern half of France." Insouciant enough, that is, to prefer Simenon to Stendhal, and intelligent enough to enjoy both.  read more »

Now some might say Richard Nixon was a dark man—Drew and Witcover and Dallek and that crowd—but not Conrad Black. And he would know.  read more »